


The Twisted Ankle (that never happened)

by pinkgeranium



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 20:30:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2786690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkgeranium/pseuds/pinkgeranium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is another one-shot unrelated to any of my other Sansan stories.</p><p>Sansa is aged up.</p><p>As usual characters and setting are the exclusive property of GRRM.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Twisted Ankle (that never happened)

**Author's Note:**

> This one-shot takes place at some point after Sandor and Sansa have escaped from the Vale. They have made camp to take a break from their journey.
> 
> As with many of my stories it is heavy on the dialogue and light on the description - imagine it occurring in some forested area with a river near-by...

Sandor knelt in front of Sansa wrapping wet strips of cloth around her twisted ankle.

“Your ankle doesn’t look swollen.”

“That’s because it’s not.”

“Then why were you sitting down by the river?”  The words ‘with that boy’ hung on the end of his sentence though they remained unsaid.

“I was waiting for you to come and find me.  Then he turned up with his sister and I said I had twisted my ankle and that you would come for me.  I thought he would go away but he didn’t.  He sent his sister for help to the village – even though I told him not to.  And you still didn’t come.”

She sounded cross; and he wrinkled his forehead.

“If your ankle wasn’t twisted and you wanted to talk to me why didn’t you just come find me?”

He stopped wrapping her uninjured ankle, and sat back on his haunches.

“I didn’t want to talk to you.  I wanted you to come look for me so I could see the look on your face when you found me – whether you would be relieved or disappointed.”

He still looked confused.

“You always used to tell me I was a bad liar; but I’ve got better at it; I had to, to survive with Lord Baelish – but you don’t lie.  Your face doesn’t lie either.  When I looked up and saw you standing in the trees watching me sitting there with that boy, you wanted to kill him.”

“So I’m a killer.  I think about killing people.  You know that.”  He shrugged.

“You think about killing people just because they talk to me?  Think of a better lie or tell me the truth. You used to talk to me back in King’s Landing – you were always giving me advice; calling me your little bird.  Now it’s Lady Sansa this and Lady Sansa that.  You used to find excuses to touch me and now all you do is hand me up into the saddle in the morning and down from it at night.  You used to ask me to look at you, well I’m looking at you now and _you’re_ the one who’s looking away.”

He responded to a question she had asked him weeks ago: “If you want a husband we could settle down in a village.  I could pretend to be your father or your uncle.  We could find you a nice boy - someone handsome and kind.”

“And you’d be ok with that would you?  Picking out a husband for me; watching me have another man’s children – what makes you think you could look at him without wanting to kill him?”

“A father is supposed to be protective of his daughter.  Besides watching you marry another man and bare his children was always my fate – and any man is better than Joffrey.”

“So it’s not beneath me as a Stark of Winterfell to marry a peasant boy with no last name but it’s beneath me to marry the second son of House Clegane?”

“Your ancestors were Kings in the North.  My ancestors were Kennel masters to the Lannisters of Casterly Rock.  I have no money and no lands.”

“I have no money and no lands.  I have no family.  I can’t even use the name Stark.”

“I stood there beside King Joffrey when they killed your father; I let them hurt you – my brothers in the Kingsguard on Joffrey’s orders.  I left you in Kings Landing with them after the Blackwater.  I wasn’t there to stop them marrying you to the Imp.  That peasant boy’s sounding good now isn’t he?  Joffrey used to call me ‘dog’ I will serve you as I served him.  I will give my life for yours I will kill anyone who tries to hurt you.  I ask you for nothing else.  I offer you nothing else.”

“But you did – the night of the Blackwater – you offered me your protection and I didn’t realise what it meant until I stood in the Sept with Tyrion Lannister and he made me those promises.”

“I was drunk that night and crazed by the fire and I would have offered you everything I had to get you away from there, so I did.  I offered you all I had and you turned me down.”

“I didn’t understand, I was a stupid little girl and I didn’t understand.”

“Then of course there is the problem of you being married all ready.”

“The marriage is invalid – neither of us wanted it – Lord Tywin forced us both and it was never consummated.  Besides Tyrion maybe dead and for all he knows I am too.”

“I couldn’t be the kind of husband to you the Imp was. I couldn’t trust myself not to- The only reason you want to marry me is because I’m here.  If Loras Tyrell were here you’d be having the same conversation with him.”

“Loras Tyrell?  Why would Loras Tyrell be here?  What has Loras Tyrell got to do with anything?”

“I saw the way you used to look at him in King’s Landing, the way you kept the flower he gave you at the Hand’s tourney.  I knew that you would never look at me like that.  Who would you pick if Ser Loras and I were both standing in front of you?”  He wouldn’t look at her but she could hear the jealousy in his voice.

“I’d pick you.  I’m not going to lie to you and say that you would always have been my choice – but when I was in the Vale with Lord Baelish I never thought of Loras Tyrell. You were the one I looked for and hoped for.  I can’t say I know how I looked at Loras Tyrell but if you could bring yourself to look me in the face I don’t think you would be disappointed by the way I’m looking at _you_ right now.”

He didn’t move to look up at her so she reached down with her left hand and gently raised his head so he could gaze into her face.  She saw a look of such longing there that she wanted to cry.  She ran her hand gently over his face.  Starting with the perfect side, she traced the line of his eyebrow his nose, his mouth, then she moved her hand to the scarred side of his face.

“Does it hurt when I touch it?” She asked.

“No”  he answered, “nothing hurts now.”

When he kissed her she grabbed his jaw with both hands and pulled him closer to her.  She wanted his lips to burn away the memory of every kiss she had been forced to give to Petyr Baelish.  Every one of those kisses would now belong to him, just as every future kiss from her lips would be given to him. 

“We need to stop now,” he pushed her gently away or at least that was what he meant to do but his hands kept stroking her hair, her face.  It was as though now he had permission to touch her he couldn’t stop himself.  Sansa thought of that longing look – of how much she had hated the last few weeks being so close to him yet never being able to touch him.  It must have been like that for him for years.  She had been such a fool, a fool for pretty faces and pretty lies.

“We don’t have to stop.”

“Trust me we do,” he said and she thought she could hear laughter in his voice, not his old cynical laughter but something new.  “We aren’t married yet.”

“But we will be tomorrow or the day after or the day after that.  Do days make such a difference?”

He made a strangled sound in his throat. “It would be dishonouring you.” He still couldn’t stop touching her – stroking her hair, her face, her arms, her hands. “Don’t make me that offer again, you don’t know how hard it is for me to say no.”

“Then say yes. Do you want to keep sleeping on opposite sides of the fire until we can find a Septon or a weirwood tree?”

“I’m afraid of hurting you.”

“You won’t.”

“It hurts the first time; did your mother get a chance to tell you that?”

“Would it be easier if I lied and told you that Joffrey, or the Imp or Lord Petyr had-“

“No.” The thought made him ill.  He didn’t know how she had managed to hold out against them but she had. 

She took his hands in both of hers.  “I am yours and you are mine from this day to the end of my days.  In your heart you’ve always known that I belong to you.”

“A man lives down in the dirt a long time he learns never to want anything; and then one day he looks up and he sees this beautiful shinny thing.  And he knows he can never have something so beautiful and shinny but he can’t give it up; he dreams about it, he makes excuses to be where it is just so he can look at it and then he wants to touch it.  And such a man, he is tempted to pull that shiny thing down so it can join him in the dirt and he can have it for its own.  But he hates himself for it because he knows that he broke that beautiful shiny thing that he loved so much.  I don’t want you to join me in the dirt little bird.”

“Then get up out of the dirt.  Leave your brother and the Lannisters back there and be the man you should have always been.  All you ever let people see was your strength – let them see how brave you are and how gentle and how fiercely you love.  Let them see what I do.”

In Kings Landing he had always turned away from her kind words, pushed them away as though he had been asked to drink from a poison cup.  She could not be allowed to think kindly of him; it would have given him hope when there was none. 

He didn’t deny her again.  He held her close and he kissed her face and her hair and her hands and he accepted the gift she offered him.  He was gentle and he used soft words; some of which were beautiful to her ears.  Afterwards she fell asleep with her head pillowed on his chest while he softly stroked her hair and her face.  He stayed awake for a long time staring up at the stars.  He felt different; he wondered if for the first time in his life he might even be happy.  He knew he was in love.  This fragile girl held his heart in her hands.

***

When he woke up alone part of him thought he had dreamed the night before but he went looking for her anyway.  He found her bathing in the river.  The last of the dye had washed out of her hair and it shone like copper.  He couldn’t help watching for just a moment that curtain of hair falling down her bare back.  He turned to leave but her voice stopped him.

“You don’t have to leave – didn’t we decide last night that you were going to marry me? You should come in, get cleaned up and wash the dirt off my back.”  There was no part of him that had the power to say no.  So he undressed and joined her in the water.  She gave him a rag to scrub her back which he did although it was a struggle not to kiss her bare shoulders and her long white throat.  When he handed her the rag she surprised him by making him turn around and using it to rub his back.

In the past his need for sex had been like a need for food or drink and he had satisfied it in the same way.  With gold.  He had bought himself a woman – usually an older one.  Convinced the younger ones had more opportunities so they could be picky and would likely be put off by his looks; whereas the older ones wouldn’t turn away custom.  He’d also tried to avoid going to the same woman more than once.  That had been easy in Kings Landing – there were a lot of whores in King’s Landing.  Whores knew their trade – their hands went to the place that would give it to them.  No woman had ever before had their hands on his bare shoulders; on his back.  He couldn’t feel the rag at all only her fingers caressing him.  He could feel himself getting hard, harder than he’d ever been with any whore – who had coaxed him to hardness with hands and mouth. 

When Sansa nudged his head under the water so she could wash his hair part of him expected her hands to hold him under and drown him.  If she had tried he didn’t think he would have fought her.  After only one night he knew his life was nothing without her in it.

But he rose back out of the water easily.  He had hoped the cold of the water and the break from her hands would have cooled his ardour but it seemed nothing had the power to do that.  Not when she was standing before him so beautiful and so perfect and so naked in the water which really didn’t hide anything at all.

“You want me again don’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter.  Just because I want it; doesn’t mean you have to give it.  You must still be sore from last night.”

“I’m not.” She said moving closer to him; and without saying another word he pulled her close.  His lips on hers, then on her throat and her breasts.  Holding her so tightly to him that the heat of her might have left marks on his skin. 

When he entered her this time Sansa felt no pain.  She felt so many sensations they overwhelmed her but pain was not one of them.  A couple of times she wanted to cry out but she worried that would make him stop because he would think he was hurting her so she gently dug her teeth into the exposed skin of his shoulder instead. 

He felt so good.  So big and strong and good, and his body was glorious.  She had seen her brothers Robb and Jon and her father’s ward Theon Greyjoy stripped naked to the waist and about some manly pursuit in the yard.  She had heard the way the older girls had talked about their muscles, and the strength of their arms, and thought them silly but now she understood the attraction of a strong body and the way it felt under her hands.  If men displayed their torso during a tourney she thought there wouldn’t have been a woman alive who would have cared about the Hound’s scared face.  No woman could have looked away from his body for long enough to notice it.  The thought made her smile and a spasm of pleasure rocked through her so she had to dig her teeth into his shoulder again. 

When they returned to the river bank she thought she saw him caress the area on his shoulder where she had dug in her teeth and she wondered if she bitten him harder than she thought. 


End file.
